Candidate touts need for better health care

Former insurance executive Mike McGavick said consumers need more choices in medical insurance to help rein in the rising cost of health care.

The federal government’s latest attempt to give seniors more choices, with hundreds of drug plans for people on Medicare, is well-intentioned but clumsy, the U.S. Senate candidate said.

Republican McGavick, former chief executive officer of Safeco Insurance Co., told about 60 supporters the United States has the world’s best health care but not the best health care system.

Among the problems, he said, are that consumers don’t have enough choices in the amount of insurance they have and often don’t know the costs of the treatment they receive.

“We don’t have an opportunity for personal responsibility in the health care system,” said McGavick, who was in Spokane for one of 18 campaign stops on a bus trip across the state.

At Safeco, McGavick said, he expanded the number of medical plans from three to 27, giving employees a wide range of options as well as the prices for coverage. That made employees better consumers and drove down costs, he said.

But the federal government’s new Part D Medicare plan to cover prescription drugs, which has as many as 600 different options across the nation, was introduced too quickly and has major communication problems, he said.

“The program was well-intentioned … but they did it rather clumsily,” he said. “It will take us time to determine whether it’s going to work.”

Sen. Maria Cantwell, the Democrat who McGavick hopes to unseat in November, has called for changes in the way some people who receive both Medicare and Medicaid are assigned insurance companies under Part D and for extensions in the deadlines.

During his speech at the Davenport Hotel, McGavick said technology being used in Spokane to standardize and share patient information over the Internet could also help bring down medical costs.

Cantwell is a co-sponsor of legislation with a similar goal.

McGavick, a former lobbyist and chief of staff to former Sen. Slade Gorton, said Congress needs new rules to limit the “revolving door” between government and special interest groups. Those groups should be banned from paying for trips for members of Congress, he said.

But the best way to reform Congress is not by changing rules or amending the laws, but electing honest people, he added.

“You can’t legislate integrity or a culture of honesty,” he said.